Practically confined to his native village, Le Creusot, Christian Bobin shows himself in his literary trajectory as an immobile traveler, stationed in a specific enclave, in the manner of the American poet Emily DickinsonHe was so much admired by her that it has become known her inclination to be alone. Without internet, without computer -that is what is said about him-, books have been his great and faithful friends. Prisoner in the cradle (2005) tells of his childhood: "Every summer I spent locked up at home, walking through the cloister of readings, enjoying the miraculous freshness of this or that phrase. When I wanted to go out, an angel would close the door. I gave up my project and returned to my room. The angel took my life away from me. I found it again in books". And it is in this space of solitude where the very young poet bursts into existence, finding not only in books, but in the neighboring nature, his territories of intimacy.
Contemplative as the most, the exquisiteness of his prose, the meticulousness of his descriptions and his inner refinement make it possible for him to be considered as an outstanding author. No one like him makes it possible for everyday life to be so enriching, so astonishing, so overwhelming, because, as he writes: "You can only see well on condition that you do not seek your own interest in what you see.". Or as the poet Jesús Montiel, a great enthusiast of his work, expressed it, Bibon tries to put into practice the motto of the Dominican saint Thomas Aquinas contemplata aliis traderethat is, to give to others what has been contemplated, because writing is for this French author a way of going out of oneself: "I write to get out of myself".
Literary motifs
Many of his literary motifs arise from what he experiences daily, continuous and insignificant discoveries in all cases: the contemplation of the clouds, the encounter with wild flowers, the flight of a butterfly, the flight of sparrows..., revelations, in short, that lead him to think that nothing is hidden and that "...nothing is hidden.everything is within our reach". It is worthwhile, therefore, to record one of the many descriptions he makes: "...".The rose bush that shivers under the kitchen window [...], the acacias [...], the magnolia [...] that falls asleep and wakes up with the song of the turtledoves and the lime tree in front of my window, whose green sparkles burst on the page of the book I read, are all part of my family and, although rooted forever where they are, their leaves, inside my heart that loves them, touch and speak to each other"This is a sublime text, like so many others, in which he expresses the immensity of life that he absorbs from nature itself in its original simplicity. However, his contemplative capacity does not end here; it extends much further:"There are islands of light in the middle of the day. Pure, fresh, silent, immediate islands. Only love knows how to find them".
It is very clear where the root of this discovering gaze lies: "Beauty comes from love, love comes from attention. Simple attention to the simple, humble attention to the humble, living attention to all life". Metaphysics of the goodwhich, if we go deeper, the author inescapably settles on God: "If God is not in our love stories, then our stories become clouded, crumble and sink. It is not essential that God be named. It is not even essential that those who love each other know his name: it is enough that they meet in heaven on this earth." In that God who recalls that of St. Teresa of Jesus, who, without needing to allude to him, saw him among the pots and pans; the same God that Bobin announces when he speaks of his father: "...".My father's daily life spoke enough of God without the need to name him."or to the one who finds in everything: "I have found God in the lagoons, in the perfume of the honeysuckle, in the purity of some books and even in atheists".
Undoubtedly, it is in this thematic framework that Bobin's gaze is perceived, always at the service of the intrinsic beauty of reality itself, to the point that the quality of beauty provides him with a unique experience of goodness, of integrity, based on what he attentively observes without, on any occasion, resorting to moralisms to justify his literary texts. Beauty in itself attracts him, shocks him and elevates him to a rapturous way of knowing the truth of the world: "Fifteen seconds of purity here, ten seconds more there: with a little luck, when I leave my life, there will have been enough purity in it to complete an hour." And it is that: "The day we allow ourselves a little kindness is a day that death will no longer be able to tear off the calendar." idea that he assimilated from his father: "Watching my father live I learned what goodness was, and that it was the only reality we could ever find in this unreal life." To conclude: "Everything I know about heaven comes from the amazement I experience before the inexplicable goodness of this or that person, illuminated by a word or a gesture so pure that the fact that there is nothing in the world that can be its source suddenly imposes itself before me".
Death
There are many other possible threads that could be unraveled from the poetic thought of Christian Bobin. I focus, to conclude in some way, on an extremely explicit one -that of death-, which is very much alive in one of his publications, the book Resurrectin which, with that poetic, diaphanous and tense prose that characterizes him, he develops a series of considerations based on the death of his father, after suffering from Alzheimer's disease. As Víctor Herrera de Miguel points out, in a very beautiful article entitled The gift of receiving. The open pupil by Christian Bobin: "The exit door of existence is, in Bobin's poetics, the threshold of life: it happens that when life loses its horizontal expansion, a new verticality emerges. In his work he frequently engages in dialogue with the dead, to whom he interpellates and narrates the world, with whom he feels he is on the way.". In order to appreciate this splendorous presence of death, it is necessary to point out that, in Bobin, its eulogy entails a hymn to life. This explains why he writes phrases such as: "Death is a gift of life".Death perfects his work" o "His death [his father's] had suddenly come to comfort him" or, finally: "Love for the dead is the most luminous thing there can be". And, as Montiel, quoted above, states: "Bobin approaches the issue of death and illness from a perspective diametrically opposed to that of contemporary literature: rather than as a random event or a cause for pique, [as] an opportunity for growth or the possibility of transcendence....". In fact, with regard to the work of mercy of visiting the sick, he says: "Visiting a sick person is the most extraordinary journey one can make in life.".
Coda
At this point, I finally leave the door open so that the reader - from this approach to Bobin's work - can take a look at any of his books, true wells of light, in which he will find the nakedness of one who looks at God and realizes that "...".the only real thing in this life is the heart".
